


The Dark Lining In Any Silver Cloud

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 00:47:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15013058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: But, Dan isn’t here.





	The Dark Lining In Any Silver Cloud

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Dan Week](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/comeonandslamandwelcometothedan) day six prompt "apocalypse."

When Lovett sleeps, he screams.

Lovett doesn't sleep much, anymore.

***

Jon yawns, raising his bandana to cover his mouth, as he crouches down to dig through the rubble of crushed Frosted Flakes boxes and beef jerky wrappers and the powder from the spicy chili peanuts that always makes him sneeze. The goods are pretty spare, between the raiders, with their dull Swiss Army knives and their desperation, and the PSA agents, with their night sticks and riot gear.

“There’s not much left,” he says, as the glass door clicks shut behind him and he joins Tommy in the Auto Services bay of the Chevron on La Cienega.

Tommy glances up from where he’s crouched on the ground. He’s wearing thick gardening gloves that are covered in grease, and even though he tries to wipe his forehead with his wrist, he leaves dark smears across his hairline. “We’re going to need a wider scavenging radius soon.”

“We’re going to need more gas soon,” Jon sighs. He leans against the passenger door of Lovett’s old Jeep. “Or a new, more fuel-efficient car.”

“I’m less worried about the gas mileage,” Tommy mutters, grunting as he pushes on a wrench, “and more about the number of times this thing breaks down every week now.”

“If you didn’t drive it so hard,” Jon rolls his eyes. He holds up a granola bar, and Tommy sighs, rolling back onto his heels.

He takes off the gloves, dropping them into his lap and holding out his palms to catch the bar. “Any time you want to drive, feel free.”

Jon snorts. He nods at the bum tire. “How’s it going?”

Tommy glares at the array of tools spread out around his knees. “Been better. I patched the hole, but- We should have brought Lovett.”

Tommy trips over Lovett’s name, and Jon flinches over what he knows Tommy wishes he could say. _We should have brought Dan_.

Jon wishes that, too.

But, Dan isn’t here.

Jon swallows. “Lovett has more important things to worry about.”

“Yeah.” Tommy finishes off his granola bar and grabs his gloves, again, and a blow torch. 

Jon takes a few, frantic steps backwards and shields his eyes as Tommy applies fire to the rubber. Jon’s always been skeptical of the ‘fire solves everything’ moniker, but it must be true in this case, at least, because Tommy grins as he finishes.

“Fixed.” Tommy kicks at the tire, and it doesn’t immediately start hissing air. He shrugs. “I think.”

Jon chuckles skeptically, crossing back to the passenger side and sliding in. “Bring the torch with us, just in case.”

“Good call.” Tommy gathers up the tools and the blow torch and throws it all into the back, before climbing into the driver’s seat. He pauses, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. “If he was here, he’d know-”

Tommy swallows, his chest rippling under his sweat-soaked t-shirt. 

“Hey,” Jon murmurs. He wets his thumb, leaning into Tommy’s space so he can rub the grease off of Tommy’s forehead. “We’re going to find him.”

Tommy leans into his palm for a moment, before pulling back and starting the Jeep. “Yeah, we will. We have to.”

***

_“This is getting too dangerous.” Jon crosses his arms across his chest, over his t-shirt and boxers. “Are you sure he doesn't suspect anything?”_

_Dan pauses. Not for long. Not for long enough for most anyone to notice, but Jon has been playing poker or chess or whatever three-dimensional game of end-of-the-world chicken they’ve all been playing together for long enough, now, to call Dan’s bluff._

_“No, he trusts me. I’ve-” Dan shivers. “After what happened with Jen- After what I did last month- He trusts me implicitly.”_

_Dan glances at his hands, like he can still see the blood under his fingernails. Like he hadn’t scrubbed them raw enough, afterwards, that Tommy had had to bandage them with neosporin and thick wads of gauze that had almost been enough to blow Dan’s cover. If Dan wasn’t so good at talking on his feet. If Dan hadn’t been building trust with the C-Suite executives for over a decade. A decade that is hurtling towards it's devastating conclusion quicker than any of them, Dan included, are ready for._

_Lovett narrows his eyes over his laptop. “Bullshit.”_

_Jon glances at Lovett, at his deep, sunken eyes and his long, wild curls. Lovett hasn’t had more than a power nap in days and just that morning Jon had stopped Tommy from adding a crushed sleeping pill into his Diet Coke. Jon’s second-guessing that decision, now. “Lovett-”_

_“No.” Lovett cuts him off. He stops typing just long enough to glare at Jon, before focusing back on his screen and calling Dan’s bluff. “No, that’s bullshit. You have the worst fucking poker face.”_

_“Lovett’s not wrong.” Jon sighs, sending the glare back as good as he’s getting. He hopes the back of Lovett’s head appreciates the level. “But a little tact wouldn’t be amiss.”_

_“It’s the end of the fucking world,” Lovett snaps. “Tact is dead.”_

_“It’s not the end of the world yet,” Dan corrects, soft and sure and braver than all the rest of them put together. He lets his tie hang, undone, around his neck as he leans against the desk, his hip brushing Lovett’s elbow. “It’s not time to give up on social mores just yet.”_

_“Even apocalypses have silver linings,” Lovett mutters._

_“Hey.” Dan bumps Lovett’s shoulder._

_Lovett makes a wounded noise, deleting his last line of code and saving his work. “Hey, hey, saving the world-level work here.”_

_Dan catches Jon’s eyes with a small, indulgent smile as he closes Lovett’s laptop and pushes between the desk and Lovett’s crossed knees. “Hey,” he repeats, spreading his fingers on Lovett’s thighs. “You have your role to play, and I have mine. And I still have some trump cards up my metaphorical sleeve.”_

_Dan digs in, hard enough that Jon can see how white Lovett’s skin is around Dan’s flushed fingers, like, maybe, he’s trying to bury the evidence of his misdeeds in Lovett’s body. Lovett pushes into it, swallowing. “Yeah,” he whispers, “yeah, me too.”_

_“But if-” Dan’s voice drops, his eyes sliding closed as he sways into Lovett’s space. “But if, someday, I don’t come back, I need you to- You need to promise that you won’t blame yourself.”_

_Lovett snorts, wet and watery, “no chance of that,” as he pushes up, into Dan’s hands, into Dan’s mouth, into Jon’s touch when he steps up behind them to slide his fingers into Lovett’s boxers._

Jon shivers awake. His body is shaking, sweat pooling in his lower back and behind his knees and ears. Adrenaline pounds through his body, in the racing of his heart and his traitorous, half hard dick, already shrinking against his hip as the memory fades into the nightmare of what came next.

Of Lovett’s eyes, red-rimmed and deep-set in circles so dark they were shot through with shades of purple, flicking towards the door at every creak and groan that filtered through their private basement bunker. Disappointment chasing hope across his face as the door stayed stubbornly shut. And, as the hours dragged long past Dan’s set time of return, that disappointment slipping into something much more insidious - the Molotov cocktail of fear and rage and guilt that is, now, his ever-present state. 

Of Tommy’s worried frown when he finally arrived after midnight, apologies - _the PR department was on red alert tonight, rumors about a traitor in PSA’s top executives_ \- dying on his tongue, as their expressions confirmed his worst suspicions. Of Tommy’s face when it sunk into him that he never got to say goodbye.

Of the gaping hole in Jon’s chest where a quarter of his heart should be. The edges charred and raw, still, all these months later. He can feel the phantom pulsing, every time he opens the closet to see Dan’s neat series of suits and ties, a failed disguise, gathering dust next to Tommy’s khakis and Lovett’s hoodies; every time he thinks they have a lead, a quick, rosy pulse just to remind himself to keep believing that Dan is alive and waiting for their rescue; every time he wakes like this, his last good memory-turned-nightmare by his fevered mind and this broken world.

Next to him, Tommy rolls over, his breathing shallow and steady. Jon removes his arm, watching Tommy’s face, his hands pillowed under his cheek and frown lines etched deep even in sleep, for a long moment before he throws back the quilts and rolls out of bed.

The clicking of computer keys is ever-present, and Jon takes a moment to fill a couple glasses with water, sliding one across the table for Lovett. Leo lifts his head from under Lovett's feet and Jon bends down to pet him and scratch behind Pundit’s ears.

Lovett glances up, his worn face illuminated in neon green binary, and he pauses to roll his shoulders.

“You sleep at all?” Jon asks, as he straightens, stepping behind Lovett and dropping his hands to the Georgetown hoodie Lovett’s wearing and the sore muscles underneath.

Lovett sighs deeply, sinking into Jon’s chest as he gives into the massage. He dips his head sideways, giving Jon more space. “I'm close to a breakthrough,” he says, in lieu of an answer.

“You said that last night,” Jon chastises. “And the night before. And- wait.” He pretends to think. “Yep, and the night before that.”

“You're a lot less funny than you think you are,” Lovett complains, but he does chuckle. “Also, it was true last night, and the night before, and the night before that. Funny thing about truths, they’re not term-limited. You can't rush these things.”

“I know.” Jon presses a kiss behind Lovett’s ear.

They'd had those arguments, over and over again over those first few weeks. Tommy, his face red and his voice dripping with frustration, _every moment we waste is a moment Dan might not have_. Jon, his own helplessness boiling over into, _teach me to code, it can't be that fucking hard_. They'd almost chased Lovett away with their own guilt and grief. Had, actually, for a few, horrendous nights, when Jon and Tommy had slept alone, only one full heart between them.

“Come back to bed,” Jon murmurs, breath warm on Lovett’s skin, cutting off his arguments before he can form them. “Just to rest. Just for a few minutes.”

Lovett sighs, but he pushes back from the table, unpretzeling his legs and letting Jon takes his hand and pull him back to Tommy. The dogs pad after them, jumping onto the bed and curling around each other at Tommy’s feet. Lovett slides in after them, fitting himself around Jon’s back, his hand stretching out across Jon, across Tommy, across the empty space where Dan should be.

The bed, at least, feels a little less empty with Lovett in it, and Jon lets himself fall into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

***

Lovett looks a little better in the morning. Not like he’s slept - Jon would know if he’d slept - but his skin is warm from where he’s been pressed against Jon all night and his fingers are a little less frantic as he settles back in front of his laptop moments after Jon awakens.

He even lets Tommy press a chaste kiss to his unwashed and home-cut curls, right where they frizz out around his ear. Tommy smiles at Jon over Lovett’s head, a small, tight _thank you_ that settles, warm and hot, in Jon’s chest.

Tommy’s fingers tighten on Lovett’s shoulder. “Come with us?” He asks, gently, with only a tinge of authority under it. “There’s an extra seat in the Jeep and-”

“My Jeep,” Lovett corrects.

“Squatters rights,” Tommy argues. “And Tanya asked for you. I know she’d love an update.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” Lovett mutters.

“And pretty soon,” Tommy continues, valiantly, with the kind of single-minded dedication to pushing Lovett that Jon’s abandoned over the past few months, “she’s going to start demanding rather than asking.”

Lovett sighs, finishing a line of code and dropping his head into his hands, his shoulders tense around his ears. “I can’t get everyone’s hopes up. Again.”

“I know.”

“And besides, I don’t see why I have to be out in the apocalypse,” he continues, chuckling with all the humor of a Coen Brothers film. “I created the damn thing, isn’t it overkill to have to see it, too?”

Tommy pauses, like he’s considering pushing Lovett a little more, but then he presses a second, longer kiss to the top of Lovett’s head and steps away.

Jon shivers and is still shivering as they climb the stairs out of the basement and climb into the Jeep. Tommy reaches over, fiddling with the air conditioning until it’s only a soft trickle of air, even though Jon can see the sweat pooling along his hairline.

“Hey,” he says, quietly, squeezing Tommy’s knee.

Tommy shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, like hearing Lovett joke about the unwitting role he played in the end of modern civilization doesn’t put the same sticky feeling in Tommy’s gut that it does in Jon’s. Tommy doesn’t move his knee away, though, and Jon leaves his hand there as he turns to watch the LA hellscape roll past.

LA is dustier now. Not enough water power to wet-down lawns and - Lovett had emphasized, when he explained it to Jon the first, and only, time he’d left the bunker since it happened - not enough societal pressure to keep lawns green in the fucking desert. Power is defined, now, by the PSA insignia on your shoulder rather than the ostentatiousness of your lawn. The only bright spot, Jon thinks dimly, to come out of all of this.

Tommy drives slowly, past agents in camouflaged PSA uniforms, with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. Past billboards, coated in the new dust, showing smiling, happy children holding PSA computers, women in floral sundresses holding up PSA bank cards, men in smart suits marching into PSA branches in Omaha and Gainesville and Detroit. Safety. Security. Support. The three ‘S’s PSA has promised to provide in the economic, moral, and sovereign void left in the wake of the blackout of PSA’s own making.

Jon blinks as they pull into the old Angel City Brewery parking lot downtown. It’s a big, deserted warehouse with enough space to hold the bulk of ex-PSA staffers turned resistance fighters. Plus, there’s a few barrels of beer still lingering in the storage room and Jon beelines directly to the bar, smiling his most flirtatious smile at Corinne.

“The usual?” She asks, rolling her eyes at him, even as she turns her cheek for a kiss. “Two or three?”

He takes a deep, painful breath and tries not to let it show. “Two.”

“Kay.” She hands over two glasses. “Let him know, though, that there’s a beer waiting for him, whenever he wants. No one blames him, here.”

“Other people’s blame isn’t really the problem,” Jon tells her. “But, thank you. I’ll pass on the message.”

He takes the pints and finds Tommy towards the front of the crowd, deep in conversation with Mukta and Priyanka. Tommy reaches for his elbow, pulling him the rest of the way and grabbing his beer, tipping it forward to clink with the others. “Priyanka was just telling me about new tech she’s developed. Show Jon.”

“Hey, boss,” Priyanka greets, emphasizing the greeting as if, after all this time, she could possibly teach Tommy better manners. “So, it’s a dart.” 

She reaches into her back pocket, pulling out a small black case and opening it. There’s two darts nestled in black velvet, and Jon reaches out to touch them before he can think better of it.

Priyanka snaps the case closed over his fingers. “They’re highly poisonous.” She hands the box deliberately to Tommy. “They’ll knock you out for twenty-four hours. And they’re just a prototype- be careful.”

Tommy laughs, making a show of holding them away from Jon as he pockets them. Jon rolls his eyes, but the crowd quiets before he can say anything more.

Tanya’s always had that effect. When she was running security for PSA, she was an ever-present force in the building and over the radio. Jon will never forget the time she slipped a comment about seeing Lovett’s ass, spread out over Jon’s desk, into a watercooler conversation about _Brooklyn-99_. 

Just like he’ll never forget the night he and Dan snuck down from the roof to find her tapping her foot against the linoleum. He’ll never forget the way his heart leapt into his throat just at the sight of her tight shoulders and the way her fingers thrummed against her biceps, the way he thought - probably, most certainly - that their cover was blown. He’ll never forget the vague, desperate thoughts he’d been thinking - about the last time he heard Lovett’s laugh and touched Tommy’s hip and kissed Dan’s mouth - until she ushered them into a storage closet, disabled the security camera with skill and ease, and brought them into the vast, underground warren of resistance fighters underneath the PSA Tech infrastructure.

Jon wouldn’t learn until much later that Dan, himself, was a founding member of the movement. That Tanya has a soft spot for him because, for a long time, it was just her and Dan, against the most powerful tech conglomerate in the world. That Dan had been risking everything - Tanya’s careful, steady, and sometimes exacting friendship in addition to the movement he was foundational to - to be with Jon and Tommy and Lovett. Jon wouldn’t understand, until it was too late.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice. First, to the Resistance” Tanya starts. Her beer is sweating down her wrist as she holds it up, waiting for the gathered crowd to do the same before she nods and tips it back, finishing it in one swallow. “Now, down to business. We have a lead-”

Jon listens, half his mind on Tanya and half on the many, many times he’s heard her give the same speech. In the months since the world ended, for real, they’ve had a lot of close calls and false starts and leads that lead to nowhere and nowhere good, but as Jon watches Tanya, now, he can’t help feel a little, helpless, pinprick of hope. 

This one, maybe, just maybe, will be the one. 

“Do you think-?” Jon asks, when they’re back in the Jeep, the sun starting to set low over the horizon and the roadblocks thicker and more insidious.

Tommy’s hands clench against the steering wheel, fingers flushed red and knuckles white. “Even if the intel is good-” Tommy swallows. “Doesn’t mean it’s- It doesn’t mean _he’s_ there.”

“I know.” Jon sits back in his seat, resting his chin in his hand and watching the billboards fly by. “How are we going to tell Lovett?”

***

Lovett was never supposed to be in this job. He was in New York, trying to make it in the stand-up scene, living off of ramen and microwavable mac and cheese in a one-room apartment in Harlem. Gigging once, maybe twice a week on particularly lucky weeks. Writing jokes about Barbara Walters and the Congressional budget process that - when he’d repeat them to Jon in some perverse form of pillow talk, years later - Jon would try not to laugh at. He’d fail every time.

The ad was targeted to him, Jon has always assumed, because of his math degree from Williams and Facebook’s faulty algorithm. A contest, sponsored by PSA Industries. A few lines of code in exchange for a million dollar grand prize, a job at the top tech firm in the country, and a starring role in the end of the world.

Lovett hadn’t known the last part, then.

Lovett didn’t know the last part until it was too late.

Jon remembers the first time they met. Lovett’s first day at PSA, awestruck and starry-eyed, running his hands up the glass banister, his stomach growling at the wall of cereal dispensaries in the commissary, questions and terrible awkward jokes flowing in equal measure. Amid the cameras and the journalists and the coders who had come to gawk at this man - kid, really - who had broken the code they had been trying to break for months, Jon had fallen in love with his soft hands and his fragile ego and his winding conversation style.

Sometimes, Jon catalogues the things he lost in the power outage. In the days just before and the hours after the two-minutes-and-thirty seconds when the power went out. Just long enough to destroy the banking system, to knock transportation offline, to melt down nuclear plants and send planes falling from the sky. Just long enough for PSA to set itself up for global domination. Just long enough to realize much, must too late, how vulnerable their reliances on technology made them. 

Two-minutes-and-thirty seconds, and then the lights flickered back on thanks to the PSA power grid, phones restarted with the PSA logo flickering into place, legal documents slotted back into place with PSA’s terms of service at the top.

Jon lost so many things. The practical things. Their house, with the memories of laughter echoing through the walls. His savings, which he’d meant, someday, to use to retire them all to an island in the Caribbean.

The intangible things. His faith in humanity was bruised and battered. His faith in himself and his innate sense of right and wrong. His faith in those around him, who he worked with, laughed with, cried with, every day for over a decade.

Jon lost Dan, in every sense, tangible and intangible. Hope in his return is one of the few bright spots he has maintained.

But, worst of all, Jon thinks, he lost that boy with the oversized curls and the oversized laugh and the oversized hold over Jon’s heart. Even on his best days, Jon’s lost hope that they’ll find him again.

***

Jon thinks about that Lovett as he and Tommy follow Tanya’s lead to an abandoned bungalow in Culver City.

“Wait, wait, don't shoot.” Eric - at least, Jon’s pretty sure his name is Eric - raises his hands in the air, palms out in the universal - and universally abused - sign of surrender. “I have information you want.”

Jon lets his hand waver on the gun he'll never be good at pretending he's willing to shoot. Next to him, Tommy holds both his hands steady.

“Why should we trust you?” Tommy asks, his voice as unwavering as his body.

“I worked for PSA. You remember me, don't you? Eric.”

Tommy glances at Jon. Jon shrugs.

“In accounting,” Eric continues, his voice tripping up and desperate. “3rd floor? The desk by the door.”

Jon shrugs again, keeping it smooth and easy.

“We ate lunch in the same cafeteria.”

Jon flinches a little, internally. Before the world had ended, he'll admit to being less observant about generic white men from accounting than he perhaps should have been. Apocalypses are the great social flattener, Jon has discovered.

“I know you. You’re Jon Favreau. And Tommy Vietor.”

“That doesn't mean anything.” Tommy narrows his eyes, raising his gun an inch further. Eric’s eyes snap to the muzzle. “We've developed a bit of a, ahh, reputation, shall we say.”

“Yes, yes,” Eric nods, much too enthusiastically. “And I may have some, um, knowledge? About what you're looking for?”

Jon frowns. “Are you asking or telling us?”

“I'm asking-” Eric says, slowly, calculatingly. “For a deal. Information on Dan Pfeiffer, in exchange for my freedom.”

A corner of Jon’s heart pounds, over-exposed and scraped sore. He tries not to show it, although he knows the way both their faces flush at just Dan’s name. They've been through this enough times. The steps play out like clockwork.

“I was an accountant,” Eric rushes to repeat. “I had an eye on all of the books. I know- I know how much they spent on the prison camp. I’ve seen the paperwork. I know where it is. I have- The paperwork’s in my back pocket, can I-?”

Jon sees what happens next as a series of disconnected images, occuring on the edges of his vision like a flip book animating Jon’s worst horrors as they play out in real time. Except this is a flipbook of his own making, with himself at the center, all his inadequacies drawn in painstaking and stark relief, page after page after page, a legacy for Tommy to flip through in the darkest moments of the rest of his life.

Tommy - driven by hope or desperation or an ingrained need to produce results - nods. Jon sees it out of the corner of his eyes, and he shifts his eyes, for only an instant but an instant too long, to see the bottom of Tommy’s jaw move in affirmation.

Before Jon’s regained his footing, Eric flicks his wrist, the knife in his hand unfolding out of its casing, long and thick and deadly. He takes a step forward, but Jon is already there, one of Tanya’s darts clasped between his fingers.

Jon is strong, but Eric must have been trained by PSA agents. He twists mid-lunge, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Jon lands on his hip, and he feels the dart pierce Eric’s shoulder at the side time as the knife slides home.

***

Jon comes to slowly, in a blaze of white. White walls. Blinding white light. White hot pain. A six inch length of white gauze down his right rib cage.

He whimpers, his eyes blistering behind his eyelids as he feels along the injury with his good hand.

“Shit, you’re awake.” Jon hears the bang as the front legs of Lovett’s chair crash to the ground before he feels Lovett’s hands on his, slapping his away. “Don’t move. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be moving after _being stabbed by a knife_.”

Jon blinks his eyes open, his eyelashes sticking together and crusty. He only manages halfway, but all the better to glare with. “You’re _mad_ at me?”

“What gave it away?” Lovett bites back. His laptop dips forward and he rushes to catch it, before setting it on his chair and rising to sit on the edge of the gurney, next to Jon’s hip. “This family isn’t big enough for two death wishes, and that’s kind of my thing.”

Jon’s heart thumps, still gaping around Dan’s missing corner, but fuller than it has been in almost a year. “No death wishes,” he whispers. Now that he’s more awake, he can feel the pain shooting down his side, and all he manage is a few taps against Lovett’s thigh until Lovett does the hard work of twisting their fingers together. 

Lovett squeezes, tightly. Lovett’s pale - so pale, after months in their windowless basement, that his skin is reflecting off the bright fluorescent medical lights - but his cheeks are flushed a light, rosy pink. “What were you thinking?” He asks, saying _I was so scared_ with his bloodshot eyes and _I don’t know what I’d do without you_ with the shaking of his knee where it rests against Jon’s good side.

The altercation is a blur, from the moment they climbed out of the Jeep at the bungalow to the moment he felt the weight of the dart in his hand. All he can remember is thinking- “I couldn’t let him get away. Not if there was even a chance-”

Lovett’s eyes flick to the left and Jon frowns.

“Did Eric-?” Jon can’t quite bring himself to say _survive_.

“He woke up a few hours ago,” Lovett says, his eyes flicking to the left again. Jon tries to follow him, but Lovett scoots forward, the length of his thigh pressed to Jon’s ribs. “Gave us some intel. Tanya’s team is doing recon now.”

Jon’s head feels thick and, now that he knows it was worth it, he’s losing his fight with the pain and the medication. “Worth it, then.”

Lovett shrugs, but Jon can read just a touch of that naive, wide-eyed young boy he’d thought he’d lost forever in the movement. “We’ll know soon, either way.”

Jon squeezes his hand. “Got you out, didn’t it?”

Lovett chuckles, and Jon can’t tell if it’s a little watery or if that’s the rising tide in his ears.

“Stay?” He whispers, falling under without waiting for a response.

***

“Soon. There’s an old prison-” “

“Riverside, yeah. It was a mental institute before the blackout, I think-” 

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Jon’s pretty sure that the pain has intensified when he wakes up the second time. He must whine, because there’s a shuffle of papers and chairs and then Tommy’s face is swimming into his vision.

“Hey,” Tommy says, voice dropped soft and gentle for the medical ward. “You’re awake.”

“Barely,” Jon tries to say, but he’s pretty sure it comes out croaked and dry. At his other side, Lovett raises a straw for him to take a careful, pained drink from.

“I trust Lovett’s already beaten you over the head for being the world’s stupidest, most heart-stoppingly-” Jon grunts and Tommy smiles, his face flushed and open- “bravest idiot I know. But, when you’re better-”

Lovett takes the straw away and Jon swallows. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“I’m counting on it.” Tommy squeezes his shoulder. “I’ve gotta-” Tommy nods towards the door. “The intel checked out. Tanya’s putting together a crew and-”

Lovett’s hand tightens in Jon’s, fierce and terrified. Jon squeezes back.

“Bring him back,” Jon whispers.

Tommy closes his eyes for a moment, then he’s kissing Jon’s forehead and he’s pulling Lovett’s chin into their first kiss in months.

Jon’s eyes slide closed before he has to watch Tommy leave.

***

The next time Jon wakes up, the world is quiet except for the clacking of computer keys. He raises his hand, pressing gently against the wound, where it aches and burns around the edges, but no longer with that all-consuming, cookfire heat of the first forty-eight hours. He can feel Lovett’s feet, tapping rhythmically against his hip in the same pattern as he’s typing.

He reaches down, wrapping his fingers around Lovett’s ankle, sliding his index finger under Lovett’s sock because he feels, instinctively, that Lovett will finally, finally let him. Lovett’s skin is just as warm and smooth as Jon remembers and he trembles, a little, the motion vibrating through Jon’s arm, but doesn’t pull away.

Lovett’s fingers pause and he closes his screen just enough to peer over it. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Jon tries to turn his neck, but stops as it pulls at his stitches. “Tommy?”

Lovett shakes his head. “Nothing yet. But, it’s only been a few hours.” His voice shivers. “Do you want me to get the nurse?”

“No.” Jon’s fingers tighten. “I want you to stay right here.”

“Yeah.” Lovett swallows. “Yeah, okay. Do you want to-?”

“Help me up,” Jon can already feel his eyes closing again, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He’s left Lovett to wait, alone, for hours already. He grunts a little as Lovett helps him adjust the bed until he’s sitting.

Lovett settles back in his chair, computer in his lap, feet crossed, again, by Jon’s hip. Jon drops his hand to rest gently on Lovett’s calves. “Tell me. About what you’re working on.”

Lovett’s head snaps up. “My- my, ahh, coding?”

“‘Yeah.” Jon lets his head rest back but doesn’t close his eyes. “Yeah. Tell me how you’re going to save the world.”

Lovett chuckles, all sharp edges and right angles, but then he starts talking. His voice fills the room, hoarse after only a few moments, after not speaking more than a few sentences at a time for so long. He types as he talks, voice just barely over the staccato thump of the keys.

He talks about code. He talks in binary, about quantum computation theory and non-linear algebra and computational geometry. He talks himself into hexagonal pretzels and out of them again. 

He talks around the psychiatric facility in Riverside and what might be happening there with cryptography as a mediator, complete with a rambling detour into the application of Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern mathematical theory.

He talks about Tommy, in the field with Tanya at his back but neither of he nor Jon at his side, through data architecture, left joins and right joins and how rewarding it is to build complicated data sets out of simplistic tables.

He talks about the prisoners who may or may not be there in the nomenclature of number theory, integers, real and rational, or maybe neither.

He whispers Dan’s name, his voice cracked and sore, in terms of probabilistic computations, meandering through a metaphor that begins in Vegas-before-the-blackout and ends in Jon’s living room, the first night he came over to binge on Pad Thai and Call of Duty and Jon’s body.

He talks about guilt in parallel computations. He talks about the burning, innate thing inside his chest that he’s trying to outrun, pushing him, eating him alive until he fixes this mistake of his own making, in the language of machine learning and computational biology, his eyes wide and awed as he recalls the robots in Tokyo and self-driving cars in San Francisco that were just reaching critical mass before the blackout. He regrets never being able to see them through to fruition.

He thanks Jon and Tommy through computational economics, booms and busts and all the level moments in between, steady and sure.

He talks until he can’t talk anymore, and then he whispers, his voice barely distinguishable from the rush of his fingers across his keyboard.

He talks until the curtain is pulled back and his voice is drowned out by a commotion of bodies. Tommy, blonde and streaked in dirt and blood and gunpowder. His hand tucked in Dan’s, where Dan’s laid out on a gurney, his skin so coated in grime and crusting fluids that it’s barely recognizable.

Except, as he’s wheeled past, straight into the operating room, he blinks his eyes open. Jon would recognize those eyes anywhere.

***

“I can _walk_ ,” Dan argues, his knuckles white where they’re gripping his crutches and his good leg shaking a little. There’s a stretch of stairs behind them that made Jon breathless, and his body is only fighting a knife wound, not a year’s worth of injuries.

“Sure,” Lovett agrees, shrugging easily. “But Tommy isn’t even breathing hard yet. We’ve gotta make him work for it, just a little.”

Dan looks like he wants to argue more, but his neck is flushed, all the way into the v-neck of his loose shirt, and Tommy doesn’t give him a choice for the rest of the way.

Pundit and Leo run circles around Dan’s feet the moment Jon gets the door opens. Jon knows how they feel. Dan smells like antiseptic and sweat and a little tange of lingering blood, but he also smells warm and familiar and like everything that’s been missing for so long.

Jon’s heart beats, so full that it’s ferocity is almost painful against his ribcage.

It must show on his face, because Lovett rolls his eyes and pushes on his shoulder. “Bed, both of you. We are not going back to the Brewery-turned-medical ward because you collapsed with exhaustion on your first fucking day.”

Jon lets himself be manhandled onto the mattress as Dan stretches out beside him, moving slow under labored breath. When Jon reaches out, though, Dan squeezes his fingers and doesn’t let go.

“It’s-” Dan swallows, coughs a little, then smiles under the bruises dotting his face. “It’s good to be home.”

Jon buries his face in Dan’s shoulder, and he doesn’t move again until he feels the mattress dip under him. Tommy sliding in on Dan’s other side, the dogs curled at their feet, and Lovett settling in against the headboard, his thigh by Jon’s head. He opens his laptop and starts typing, one handed, the other curled into Jon’s hair.

“Step one, done,” he murmurs, quietly. “Next step, bring down PSA.”

For the first time in a very long time, Jon thinks they might just succeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are much appreciated! Find me on [Tumblr](http://stainyourhands.tumblr.com/)


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